Saturday, April 06, 2013

Home Alone

I'm home alone this week, and I had all these shows I wanted to see.  There was a good show every night...well, since Wednesday, so I've only missed two.  Wednesday night, though, was Nick Jaina, who just doesn't play shows in town anymore.  What a shitty time to be sick.  It's probably allergies, but I suppose it doesn't matter what it is.  I just have to wait it out either way.  But tonight, not only was I feeling better (maybe, a little), but I already had a ticket.  So I was going for sure.  Low, dammit!  I'm pretty sure the last time I saw Low live was in something like 2002, at the State Theatre in Minneapolis.

For those of you who aren't familiar, Low is a band out of Duluth, MN, who have been around for 20+ years.  They told a story tonight about  being on tour 19 years ago tonight, driving home to northern MN from Louisiana overnight, and as the sun rose, they drove into range of Radio K (I can only assume, based on how the story ends), and heard that Kurt Cobain had died...followed by the first time they heard themselves on the radio.  They're the band that was first called "slowcore".  Even though the lovely fiance was out of town for tonight's show, he knew I'd want to go, and when he was at BarBar for happy hour one evening, he picked up a ticket for me.  (P.S.  Dear lovely fiance, you know how I hate Christmas music?  There's one Christmas album I'll listen to...here it is:  Low Christmas...it's the only one, though.)

Anyhow, I'm still a bit under the weather, and I get to the show and I'm wondering how I'll hold up.  I get there late, as is my style when left to my own devices and I don't know the opener.  First, I get to the ticket-taker stand, and she explains, "I need to stamp the back of your right hand.  This stamp will allow you re-entry, so you can come and go."  Why are you telling me this...oh.  It's amateur night, isn't it?  So I walk into the venue, and it's astoundingly crowded.  The signs say the show is sold out, but I had no idea Mississippi Studios had enough exits for this many people.  My next thought...oh, thank god I was late.  This Thalia Z...omebody (I forget the last name, there was a Z and a d and...oh, whatever) looked like she was 60 years old and had done some hard living, with years of needle drugs and a lengthy stay in prison on drug-related murder charges, and had cleaned up her act...now touring as the female Johnny Cash, if he were a total hack instead of a musical genius.  She was even wearing black jeans and a black button-up shirt, though the shirt was made for someone three times her size, and she looked more like she had recently raided the state prison you're-going-to-be-released clothes closet and couldn't find anything that fit.  You have no idea how glad I am that I missed all but 1.5 songs from this woman.  But then, between sets, I'm stuck in this tight-packed crowd.  What's the word for claustrophobia, but instead of anxious, you're irritable?  That's what I get at sold-out shows.  No matter the size of the room, the crowd reaches this tipping point at shows that sell out in advance, I don't know how to describe it, but it's a different crowd than at shows where you know you'll be able to buy a ticket at the door.  To my right is the contingent that is sitting crosslegged on the floor.  To their right is an obese woman in a black crushed-velvet dress that might have been fashionable some time contemporaneous with Low's first album, with a mohawk that's been slicked back into what I can only describe as an inch-wide mullet, held in place (why?  it seems pretty well subdued already...) by a butterfly clip.  I'm pretty much going to have nightmares about that miserable, greasy, handcuffed mohawk that must dream about spiking free.  To my left is some woman monologuing in an irritated but surprised way about how her husband is selfish, and won't put money in the joint account to pay the bills, as if she's just discovering this personality trait and is amazed, trying to figure out what to do.  This is, like, 20 minutes of going on about this, as if there's any detail to be shared beyond what I just summarized.  Um...first promise yourself you'll never pair up with anyone again before you know (and are comfortable with) how they handle money, and then buy a plane ticket to far, far away and change your name.  He's clearly too lazy to find you, and you said yourself there's nothing in the joint account, so...no loss, right?  And right in front of me is this overdressed woman, also monologuing, to this younger woman who looks barely old enough to get in.  They've both got drinks in their hands, as the older woman (clearly with some paraprofessional knowledge) goes on, and on, and on...and on...about how inpatient alcohol treatment works, and how to talk to this friend of hers about treatment without scaring him off, working up to all her professional horror stories, overdoses and bad drug combinations and bizarre stories of half-remembered sexual encounters and half-overdose-remembered-sexual...I'M NOT LISTENING!  SHUT UP!  Low has got this countdown projected behind the stage, and there is approximately a minute a half before they start to play...and I have to get away from all these people.  Remember that condition I've got, claustro-fuck-you-all?  Where I get all pissed off in a crowd of people who are elbowing me and talking about self-absorbed bullshit that doesn't belong in a music venue when a band's about to play who should stop you from even whispering, and absorb all your attention?  I was about seven feet from the stage, and could see all the musicians' faces, and I couldn't take it anymore.  I fled for the back of the room, next to the bar.

Whew.  Apparently the people who like music are taking refuge back there with me.  Larry Crane and a couple of his friends, for one.  Crane doesn't remember having met me, but when a friend of his asked, "Where are these guys from?" I was the one who gave them the right answer, and they all seemed impressed.  I also ran into a friend of a friend who we regularly see at the semi-annual house-show "recital-bacchanal" events this friend puts on.  The show starts, and at first, many in the crowd have a hard time figuring out when the band is just making noise between songs and when a song has started.  They begin with the only song from the new album that I've heard (thanks to OPB music).  There's blurry found-footage montage stuff projected behind the band.  Alan doesn't talk to the crowd at all.  It looks to be Zak Sally playing bass and keys again.  They play for about an hour before they play anything else I know (i.e., anything more than 10 years old).  But it doesn't matter.  Their catologue is so consistent.  Alan and Mimi trading the low and high parts (Alan must have a range like Ritchie Young, from baritone to a high, clear soprano-like tone with no hint of falsetto), such slow bpm yet building to such intensity.  It all felt like home.  Driving through some empty territory between towns, heat cranked up to high and the windshield still freezing, knowing that wherever I'm headed, there will be joyful people with good beer and a roaring fire when I get there.  But that cold space between, when I'm driving, is full of slow, intense drama to try to keep the cold at bay.

I got home and looked through the box of all my oldest CDs, the ones that have never been committed to computer.  Is it true that I only have two Low CDs?  And that they're Long Division, their second album, from (holy shit, I'm old...) 1995, and OWL (Low remixes) from 1998?  It's been over eight years since the person who got referred to here in this blog as the Evil Ex raided my CD collection when he left (fuck you, I'm kicking you out instead...and I paid for the CDs!).  That's far, far too long to go without Things I Lost In The Fire.  Dinosaur Act is still stuck in my head from tonight's show.  If I have anything to say about it, it will never leave. 

P.S.  The Pink Floyd cover they played tonight is something they've been playing since 2002; it was the B-side for the 7-inch single of Canada, which competes hard for my favorite Low song ever.  I actually know Fearless better as a Low song than as a Pink Floyd song.  And this whole aside makes me think that I must have Trust (2002) in another box somewhere that is also not committed to computer.  Damn you, iTunes, for demanding that I put a physical CD in the computer or find some recorded track somewhere, rather than being able to download my faintest memories, the things that most need preserving.

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